Youth doesn't think about shooting much on anniversary

Tuesday, December 5th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

FORT GIBSON, Okla. (AP) _ Eighth-grader Billy Railey shows the scar from a bullet that entered the back of his lower leg and exited the front as he fled from a school shooting a year ago.

The 14-year-old flexed his calf muscle to make the indention of a scar a little deeper.

``It does weird things when I move my leg,'' he explained.

Railey and four other students were wounded Dec. 6, 1999, when classmate Seth Trickey opened fire with a 9 mm handgun outside Fort Gibson Middle School. Trickey was subdued by a science teacher after wounding four 12- and 13 year-olds _ Railey, Cody Chronister, Savana Knowles and Brad Schindel.

A fifth student, Dakota Baker, was grazed by a bullet that went through Chronister's arm.

Stricken students survived and returned to school shortly after the incident, and this small town rooted in a 19th-century frontier outpost got about its business.

``It's not talked about,'' said Billy's mother, Tywilla, a school cafeteria worker who discussed the incident along with her son and husband Robert in their small house along narrow streets named for trees and Confederate heroes. ``People just try to keep going on.''

It suits her just fine that not much is being said on the one-year anniversary of the shooting.

A juvenile court judge found Trickey guilty of six counts of shooting with intent to kill, along with a weapons charge. Trickey remains in the Rader Diagnostic Treatment Center in Sand Springs, a Tulsa suburb.

Several months after the shooting, anger over the incident seemed to linger. But school superintendent Steve Wilmoth said Monday the townspeople have apparently put the incident behind them.

``I think they just dealt with it,'' he said.

Counselors will be available for students Wednesday, but Wilmoth said school officials plan no observances.

``We're from old pioneer stock,'' said Robert Railey, a city employee. ``You just pick up and go on.''

He said the Raileys don't hold a grudge, despite a recent report from Oklahoma Office of Juvenile Affairs that Trickey has shown little remorse.

Mrs. Railey said residents are puzzled instead of angry and view the shooting as an aberration. She said she was just thankful afterward that her son wasn't more seriously wounded.

Trickey was in an accelerated studies program at the time and was popular, making the incident all the more baffling.

The school shooting was the third last year and came eight months after 12 students, a teacher and the two student gunmen died from a shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo. The spate of shootings has quelled, and Railey said he thinks there may not be anymore in Fort Gibson or anywhere else.

``We're just a good Christian community, God-fearing community as a whole, and bad things happen to good people,'' he said.

Oklahoma City psychologist Shree Vinekar had testified that he believed Trickey was obsessed with the military and acted out of a desire to prove himself capable during combat.

The Trickey family did not respond to a request for an interview. Attempts to reach other victims were not immediately successful.

Billy said he didn't have flashbacks or nightmares afterward, but he said he jumps a little when he hears popping noises that sound like gunfire.

When asked about Trickey, Billy shrugged his shoulders and said matter-of-factly, ``I just don't care for him.''

Billy said he and his friends congregated in front of the school that day before class like they usually did. He heard the cracking sound of gunfire.

``I thought it was just a joke, somebody messing around with fire crackers,'' he said.

But he fled after he saw dirt flying where bullets hit the ground and friend Brad Schindel shouted for the group to run.

Billy hurried to a locked back door and pounded on it, afraid the shooter would come around the corner after him. A teacher soon answered. He said he didn't realize he had been shot until he felt numbness in his leg.

Afterward, he got get-well toys and gifts, including $200 from a church, stuffed bears and a remote control car from his orthodontist.

These days, he spends most of his time playing football and wrestling and not thinking about the shooting much.

``It's not like the biggest thing in my life,'' Billy said. ``It's just something that happened and you try to deal with it.''